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Episode: 4127
Title: HPR4127: Retro fun with the GPi 2 cases
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4127/hpr4127.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 19:55:45
---
This is Hacker Public Radio episode 4127 for Tuesday the 28th of May 2024.
Today's show is entitled Retro Fond with the P2 Cases.
It is hosted by Kevby and is about 26 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is.
Kevby takes a look at and shares his experience with the P2 Cases.
Hello, hello, this is Kevby from the Tuxtam Podcast and welcome to another episode of Hacker
Public Radio.
Now, after getting some good feedback from the pie hole episode that I did and actually
just discussing on a few of the chat groups that I'm on, one thing that I did notice
was that a lot of people did struggle to find useful uses for the Raspberry Pi plenty
had them, but plenty also seemed to genuinely struggle to find a usefulness to them after
they finished that initial playabout stage.
So I thought I would make up our Wii series, I'm not going to call this a playlist.
But I'm just going to do a score or just the various things with the Raspberry Pi that
I've used it for over my time and also give you maybe a bit of feedback, a bit of thought.
So almost almost kind of a bit of a review of each bit there.
I'm going to do this, I'm not going to go over the whole thing in one long episode, instead
I'm going to break it up into shorter episodes.
And the first one I am actually going to look at today is by a group called Retro Flag.
This is actually a double review.
It's practically the same thing, it's the GPI Case 2.
Now this comes in two forms.
You've got the GPI Case 2 and you've got the GPI Case 2 W. I'm going to start with
the two W. As far as form goes, it looks very, very, very much identical to the old Nintendo
Game Boy, the original, and more so on the color.
And it feels substantial in the hands, both of them feel very good quality wise.
I mean the buttons and everything have a very satisfying click and they don't feel cheap,
which I really do like.
When it comes to the W, it's actually very neatly done.
This requires a Pi Zero to be put in it.
And if you remember the old Game Boy, because the games were on the cartridges from the
back, you take out the cartridge, and that's exactly what you do with the two W. You take
out the cartridge, you unscrew the cartridge, and there's a space there for your Pi Zero.
Now we caveat here, there is one of the Pi Zero's that does not work with this, and that
is, can't remember the code of the top of my head, but if you've got the Pi Zero that
comes pre-soldered with the header pins, the GPI opins, then this won't work with that.
So unfortunately if you've got the pre-soldered one, that will not work.
Pop it together, now you've got to make sure as well, well you don't have to, but I would
personally make sure, because it was quite awkward getting the SD card in and out.
Now you need to put in the SD card after you've put the thing together, otherwise you risk
damaging the SD card, but that's actually very similar to most Pi cases.
So what I would recommend is make sure everything is sorted, everything is pre-loaded, so don't
forget, put in your image or the image that I specifically used was a retro Pi, loaded
with all the ROMs you want, everything like that, and then just put it in once, otherwise
I found it actually really fitly together, when it came to ejecting, you did have to kind
of press it in, but it didn't have a nice spring back, and I ended up having to get a very
thin pair of tweezers to actually pull it out.
So yeah, that's the first thing I would say actually.
As far as loading up one thing you will need to do, and that is because retro Pi is actually
designed generally for using with a normal Raspberry Pi, then the default output is HDMI.
So what you need to do is go over to retroflag.com and you'll find a section there for the
QW case, and then just what you need to do is go link there for its Github page, and on
the Github page it says, right, what are you going to use?
So there's one there for recall box, which actually works out of the box because recall
box is a distro that's been specifically made for this case, it's also got one there
for retro Pi, and also one for Battocera, Battocera 31, I'm not sure, actually I don't
know what that is at all.
All these essentially do is run a script on it, and instead of it defaulting to the HDMI
output port, this will default to the cases screen.
So that's really not too much of an issue.
When it comes to using this, there's also a retro Pi theme that is specifically designed
for this.
I tried it with the standard theme because I thought that's okay, I like the theme.
The problem is it's fine to read that on a large screen.
When it comes to the small 3-inch screen that this has, although it is nice and clear,
the screen itself, the contrast is not the same.
So this one has been made.
It's not too dissimilar to the standard retro Pi theme, but it is considerably more contrast.
So the background is darker, text is lighter, and it does make for reading it so much easier.
So I would highly recommend that, go with that.
When it comes to playing, it's just a standard of anything else.
You go to the, well when you load it up, first of all, initial boot up, and this is for
both of these, it goes through what emulator shall require, because retro Pi comes with
a pile of emulators on it, but it doesn't display them all.
It will read through the ROMs and then it will pick out what ROMs are present and what
you actually need to run them.
So if you only have, for example, main ROMs on this, the only two things you're going
to see on the retro Pi screen are main and retro Pi settings.
That's it.
That's all you will get.
If you install, like say, 10 ROMs of each different emulation, then you're going to have
all the emulators fired up.
As far as the actual performance goes, with the Pi 0, then it is considerably less powered
than the 4 that's used in the GPI case 2.
So that's why I was quite keen to get both of them to try them out, because I was there
thinking.
One of the things that I would say, when it comes to retro gaming, the biggest issue
here is that all of retro gaming, SNES and PREIRA, was all done on a D-pad.
I mean, the analog sticks just didn't exist, I don't think they weren't a thing on consoles
back then.
But if you remember the Game Boy, it had one D-pad.
Now this has got four action buttons, two turbo buttons and the start and selects, it's
got more buttons than the actual original Game Boy.
It also has the L and R on the back, which I'll come back to in a minute.
You've got no thumb sticks at all, no analog sticks.
So why is that an issue?
So truth is, if you're using the Zero, it certainly is not, because a Pi Zero, although
considerably less powered than a Pi 4, will happily run anything from the SNES or Megadrive
Genesis era.
It will actually run the 64, and I've tried this, mostly the Nintendo 64 runs OK, some
games were quite a bit spluttery.
But your biggest issue is that the 64, by that point, had actually moved on.
Yes, it had a D-pad, but it also had an analog stick, and the analog stick was what was
being more used.
So trying to control something that's designed for an analog stick with a digital D-pad,
actually proved to be quite awkward.
So yeah, if you're thinking you're going to be playing PlayStation 2, Saturn the 64,
or anything like that, then I really would think again, this one's not the one for you.
As far as price wise, the GPI case 2W was slightly more expensive for me.
I got this from the Pi Hut, and the 2W version case came to 75 pound.
If you want to get the Raspberry Pi Zero 2W, it is currently 14 pound.
So that's going to come to just under 90 pound.
You don't need bathies with this.
It contains, I'll say, my and Bathory within it, be warned as well, the 2W comes with
its own charger.
It is not a standard charger at all.
It's got its own charger.
So just be warned with that, especially your plan here, taking this away on holiday
or anything like that, that's something you're going to think about.
This will not fit your standard MicroUSB or USB-C charging port.
How is that compared then with the GPI case 2, because you may be thinking what's the point
of mentioning it if it's only just a number or a later?
Well, the one thing I do want to point out was setting up the GPI case 2W was really nice
and easy.
Everything just worked out of the box.
Okay, some of the ROMs I tested out didn't work, but actually when I tested them out on
my own computer, they didn't work either, so that's not the sightings fault at all.
This was dodgy ROMs.
The GPI case 2, I spent three nights on it.
I don't mean I was up all night, coming home from work, I spent three nights trying to
get this thing running.
And yeah, I got it running after a while.
The biggest issue is, I loved the 2W version, used, lifted out the cartridge and put it
in, that was it, no problem.
The 2, I say it actually is a Pi4 and it is a Pi4, but it's the CM4, it's a computer
module 4.
That's obviously just got the power of a Raspberry Pi4, but it is in a different form
factor, so you can't just shove a Pi4 in there.
You still took the cover off in the same place, but it exposed the board.
And you had to try and get your hands in and push down on the board, and this is where
I had the problem.
I was getting it into what I thought it was clicking, and obviously it hadn't quite
clicked properly, because I thought I had a dodgy CM4 initially, because it would not
read the card at all, when the SD card was that we sloted enough to the side of it.
I tried and tried, I couldn't get it, and then the one thing about the 2 is, it does
come with a dock, which to be honest, there's nothing amazing about the dock, it is just
a dock for charging, you don't have to use it, but it says an option, but if you do use
it, the dock itself actually gives you a full size HDMI output.
The charging points are USB-C and two USB-2 full size ports, so you can connect things.
What I did was I plugged it into the port, downloaded retro Pi onto a USB stick, stuck
it in the back, and tested it, and it fired up.
Now, one word of warning, when you do do this, it will default to the HDMI port, it's
on the back, so the screen, when you put in the dock, the screen switches off.
So that is great if you want to play this on a big screen, but the kind of whole point
of it is that you've got a device that you're going to take out and about.
So running this off the dock kind of totally defeated the purpose, so I thought, right,
okay, I know that the CM4 works.
So what I did was, I had to unscrew the back, and then I used a small plastic piece, I
mean a plate trim or something like that, I wouldn't use any metal, purely because you
don't want to damage it.
There's three or four screws out of the back.
Put the piece of plastic down and go right the way round, and just gently pop out all
the parts and the thing comes in half.
That exposed the full back.
I was then able to put the CM4 module in without a problem, it worked first time then.
It fired up, so I thought, oh yeah, and I thought, well, this might be the end of my
problems.
No.
This was the start of a new set of problems, because although the two W case fired up without
a problem, the two case decided, yes, I'll fire up, but with absolutely zero sound.
I spent a whole evening on this without getting any success at all.
Yeah, I had this issue and had a look online, and guess what I found?
That this was actually an incredibly common issue, and so many people had said an awful
lot about what you can try, what you can do, and I wasn't getting anywhere.
And then on the retro pies on forums, the official forums from the website, I found a poster
about it.
I have to go a big shout out to G30FF, which I'm assuming is Jeff, he has said, go into
the retro flag config.txt, and you will find a setting dtparam equals ordeal equals off.
Comment that out and reboot.
I did that.
Hurray, the thing worked.
So if you have this issue with the audio not working, then that is what you need to do.
And like I said, I wish I'd seen that earlier, because I spent hours and hours fighting
with this thing.
One thing that's odd is that on both of them, if you go into the settings on retro pie,
the volume is always set to zero, and you can turn it up in the settings if you want,
but eggs that go back in, it's still at zero.
However, the sound does work.
I don't get what that is.
A lot of people have spoken about it, I initially thought that was my problem, that it was
just defaulting the sound to zero, but it turns out it wasn't, because the sound's
working, and yet if I look in the settings right now, it's still there.
So yeah, that one was a bit annoying.
Now the other thing that you need to do, I mentioned about the screen, the other thing
that is recommended, you don't actually have to do it, but it is highly recommended, is
to go and download the safe shutdown script, so you'll need that.
I'll put the link to the retro flag website it.
As far as I'm aware, if you're in the US, you can buy this off the retro flag website.
However, they don't seem to ship internationally, oh, they were soldy, they do ship internationally,
but you pay for it.
I got mine off the pie hut.com, I'll put the links in the show notes for this.
I did actually mention the price of the two W.
Now this one comes in slightly cheaper, with the dock, the other one does not come with
a dock, the two W does not come with a dock, but with the dock,
they're cuttably on the pie hut, it's 69 pound.
However, with your pie module, they do recommend you take the light option, they do not,
they say that you should not take the onboard storage because it generally doesn't seem
to like it.
That's just the reviews I was reading.
So I thought, right, this is a pie four.
I want to see some extra power with this.
So I bought the eight gig version, the price of that currently is 76 pound 80 pound.
So we were over 145 pound, that goes up significantly in price.
But I thought, well, I did want to try it, and I thought hopefully this will give me
a significant increase in performance as well.
As far as performance goes, both of these are already considerably more powerful than
the consoles that they were emulating.
So one of the things I loved about both of them was playing on them, took me way back,
took me really back to the 90s and even the 80s, it was great.
My first ever console was Atari 2600, and I went and installed a bunch of different
ROMs for that, and yeah, it brought back the memories, and the good thing is I was really
expecting my teenage son, who is a gamer, but he's got his own PC and various consoles,
and I thought he's going to look at this and say, I'm not interested.
He's now getting into the Atari 2600 games.
So it's great to see it's introducing him.
I thought, like I said, he'd look at this and go, that's not even graphics, but no, he's
absolutely loving them.
It's funny going back and playing some of the games I used to be good at, I've recognised
it now, I'm struggling to play them.
Well, I can't, I can play them, but I'm still going to beat them at all.
Everything running the snails, one thing I would recommend, anybody remembers from the
original snails or Super Famicom if you're in Japan, the game Super R type.
Super R type was an excellent, excellent game.
However, it had an issue in that it was a wee bit ahead of its time, it was actually,
it required too much resources than the Super Nintendo could actually provide and it suffered
from terrible slowdown.
You can play it as it was meant to be played because of that extra oomph, then this has
been played so nicely and it was really good to play that.
I got the CM4 edition purely to play better games.
This actually, this one will run PlayStation 2 games, if you so wish.
The biggest issue is, these things are designed, well, PlayStation 2 was actually designed with
two thumbsticks, not just one.
It's almost impossible to control most of the games that I tried.
I really could, I tried, playing with one of the games that I was really keen to play
from the late 90s, was Colin McRae on the original PlayStation, I love that rally game.
Because it was designed to be played with the thumbsticks, playing it, your turnings
too aggressively, I ended up in way off the road more than I was actually on the road.
And also, you've got the trigger buttons on the back, but everything PlayStation 1 have,
certainly from PlayStation 2 onwards, you had four triggers, two on each side.
This does not have that, it only has one on each side, so you don't actually have the
whole area buttons.
But in saying that, that's actually maybe not necessarily a bad thing, in the sense you
don't have the whole area buttons.
When it comes to playing Super Nintendo games, Mega Drive, Genesis games, fantastic.
I think the Mega Drive had three action buttons and no triggers.
Now the Super Nintendo had four action buttons and two, you might call shoulder buttons, they
were kind of triggers.
The biggest issue is these buttons on the back, yeah you can play some and they're not
uncomfortable to play, but they are so flush with the back, that that actually difficult
to find, there are three kind of doors on each one, which kind of help you, but they're
not prominent enough, maybe it might look a bit less aesthetically pleasing, but I would
like to have seen these trigger buttons or shoulder buttons raised a wee bit, so you
can actually be guaranteed you're on them.
Otherwise I was finding, I was struggling to actually press them, I was hitting the
back without actually touching the button, if you understand what I mean.
Neo Geo was one that worked very well, but again most of the games they're required five
and six buttons, and it was never lucky enough to own a Neo Geo, because I remember them
in the 80s here, I mean I don't know what the consoles were, but the games were 150
pounds, and the, I know I said 80s, sorry I think was already 90s, but that was unrealistic,
I mean I remember some of the Super Nintendo, I had a Super Nintendo at that time, and
the games, some of the games there came out at 60 pounds, which was just never a realistic
thing, so when it came to Nintendo, Super Nintendo gaming, back in those days, I generally would
have to wait for Nintendo to come on sale before I would actually get a game, not, not
because I'm saying my parents were titan anyway, or Mindy, it just did, that was a heck
of a lot of money, I mean you couldn't compare most films back then on VHS, where about
eight pounds, and if I went into the local Woolworths, they're just going back a while, you'd
very rarely spend ten pounds on a video, and then you had this game coming out for 60
pounds, really it just wasn't, it wasn't realistic at all to most people's budget, so getting
to play all these games that I hardly got to, this was absolutely great, as far as portability,
very portable indeed, the CM4 version comes with a QEE protective case, the W does not,
it comes as is, once you take out of the box, that's it, they're substantial enough and
wait, I would say that about a quarter kilo, roughly, I'd say about 250 grams feeling them,
they're not overly heavy, but you know they're chunky enough, they're, again, they're not paper
thin, you could put this carry this in a pocket, like a jacket pocket or something, but there's
no way you could get this in a pair of jeans, and they should have a huge pocket to it, so,
as far as portability goes, as far as I can remember, it does have the same, maybe a wee bit lighter,
but it does have the same feel of the original gameboy, same size, same everything,
if you decide to go with recall box, it comes with code installed as well,
however, I didn't want to take this and just use it as a video player, purely because the screen
is 4.3, so you're going to end up with a later box effect, this is not a widescreen, again,
most of the games in a pre-2000 were not widescreen, but at the end of the day, I've got my phone if
I'm travelling and I actually want to watch a video, but as far as gaming goes, this is absolutely
ideal, if you want to play anything super Nintendo, Stroke Mega Drive era or before,
not a good thing, if you are wanting to play anything from the later era, does it have the power?
Yes, with the CM4, it does, however, I believe to actually play most of these games, you would need
to have a controller, which, again, defeats are going to be part of it, it's meant to be an
all-contained system, so you shouldn't really need to carry that many peripherals,
there is actually a screen brightener on the left-hand side, the volume is on the right-hand side,
on the top, you have got a reset button, you've got a power button, on the bottom,
now on the bottom of the GPI2 case, you've got a 3.5 jack, so you can actually listen plug headphones in,
and you've got the USB-C connection to power it, however, on the the two W version,
the power is on the top left, final thoughts, if you're into gaming, this is an absolutely great
investment, and especially if you're into travelling, if you're a type of person who stayed at home
all the time and doesn't like travelling, forget it, this is pointless, but the one thing
that this is great is, and you won't get any aggro on the planes, because you still do get some
on the planes who will say that all Bluetooth devices need to be turned off, so you have issues
there, especially if you want to use your controller with your phone, because most controllers do have
Bluetooth, if anybody does give you a hassle, you can just say, whether it's absolutely no Bluetooth,
nothing connected, you've got the old fashioned wired headphones, so no issue there,
battery wise, both of them seem to really work quite nicely, I have charged this up not that many
times to be perfectly honest, okay I can't say I've sat on it for a five-hour solid gaming,
because yeah, I'm just not that type of gamer to be perfectly honest, but I took them away,
I was away for ten days on holiday, and I was kind of picking them up, maybe playing them for,
I played it for quite a bit on the plane, both there and back, and I was picking it up for
kind of a half hour each day in the evening, I didn't need to charge it once, if you had a heavy
gamer, you will probably need to charge it, obviously a lot more regular than that, as far as
recommendations go, it is nice having the dock, it is nice having the extra power,
but I'm actually going to recommend you get the W version, why do I say that, because it's not
worth the extra cost, it is not worth the hassle of initial setup that I really had, and the
problem is you cannot actually use this power very well, because as I said already, you can't
get the, you can't really play the games that require more power, very effectively, unless you
have a controller, which again will definitely take away from the overall experience of having
a handheld gaming device, so as I said, if this sounds like something you would like, if you're in
the US, then check out RetroFlag.com, if you're in the UK, check out the Pie Hut.com, yeah, that's
the GPI case 2 and the GPI case 2W, if you're into your retro gaming, then I can highly recommend these,
if you want to play more modern games, if you want to play from PlayStation onwards, then I would
say this is not the ideal scenario for you. You have been listening to Hacker Public Radio
at HackerPublicRadio.org, today's show was contributed by a HBR listener like yourself,
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